Tag Archives: building

October 2007

Friday, October 19, 2007 – Official Homesteaders

Sometimes it’s go great I want to take a picture – sometimes we want to cry. Our kitchen turned out to be beautiful, considering it’s comprised of the cheapest cabinets, laminate flooring, range hood and countertop we could find. The two stainless steel appliances (our fridge and washing machine, bought for the long-term) look a little out of place, but all in all it’s a truly beautiful “room” in our wee home.

The bathroom is similarly attractive – lots of cabinets for storage space, everything fits nicely, etc. At the same time, our shower continues to leak despite multiple caulk/silicone applications, and our toilet has decided that it doesn’t like flushing. We finished installing the wall cabinets in the bathroom last night (well, Brock did – I was holding his chair and passing him the level, etc.) and it was a paradox that we’ve come to expect: huge satisfaction in getting something DONE, and it looking surprisingly great . . . but some fatal flaw would require more work, more inconvenience, and possibly more expense.

I think the big lesson I/we have learned this summer is that the housing market is not designed for spontaneity. It’s best to hire a contractor when you build a home. And in order to actually GET a contractor, you need to plan years in advance. Brock and I are rather impetuous when it comes to our Dreams, and I don’t regret acting on our “let’s farm NOW” desires, but it all would have been (and would be!) much, much easier to get someone else with experience to do the work for us, whom we can hold accountable when something goes awry.

If we survive this (emotionally, physically and financially), we will be Super Heroes.

Some happy thoughts:
1. every morning I wake up to a backyard covered in mist, with the brightest stars I’ve ever seen still in the sky.
2. we have deer that visit us (and eat our carrot tops), which isn’t a good thing farm-wise but is still beautiful when I see them.
3. the birds are incredible. They’re all flying south now, in their big Vs and Ws, and I have to stand still and watch each time. (Ravens suck, though.)
4. each room/section we complete looks WAY better than we expected.
5. Peter loves his fresh cilantro and carrots.
6. I’ve learned how to use tools (e.g. skil saw, drill, electric screwdriver, table saw).
7. Brock and I have never slept so well.
8. I have arm muscles.

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Sunday, October 21, 2007 – Official Homesteaders, Back From Vancouver

We went to a wedding in Vancouver this weekend, which was wonderful but left us little time to progress with our to-do list here. When we got home around 2pm today I crashed immediately and slept until it was just getting dark out. Meanwhile Brock was Super Productive (yay!).

Saturday morning at 3:00 we woke up to our septic system’s alarm going off (I just thought the overhead fan was being oddly noisy). The heavy rain this week had flooded the tanks, which apparently need to be sealed up better. It was a stressful morning, me calling everyone even remotely septic-y, trying to find someone to diagnose our alarm while Brock risked sinking into the mire of our backyard, digging a trench for the water to follow away from our septic tanks.

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Thursday, October 25, 2007 – Hardworking Garlic Farmers

I got distracted last entry and couldn’t finish, so before something else needs attention here are some crucial updates:

  1. toilet works fine. We called the plumber that first day and he pointed out we hadn’t switched the septic pumps on, thusly the toilet could not flush properly. Felt like gomers. Cost $77 for the plumber’s house call. Dammit.
  2. septic is still not perfect, but Steve told us how to disable the alarm so at least we aren’t being woken up by sirens in the middle of the night. They need to come out asap and re-seal the tank, before it rains and becomes a mud bog again.
  3. we’ve submitted our “farm development plan.” If our property is considered a farm (normally, this means we’ve grossed min. $2,500 from produce, eggs, etc.), our annual property taxes are $85. If we aren’t considered a farm, property taxes for our 10 acres of prime land = $24,000. Holy shite. The solution for new farm owners like us, who haven’t grossed $2,500? We had to submit a farm development plan, essentially promising that we intend to be Real Farmers in 2008. If our application isn’t convincing enough, we’re screwed.
  4. pastoral life is so fun and relaxing . . .
  5. I planted garlic tonight!!!!!!!! I’ve been meaning to do it for weeks — the traditional garlic planting date is October 15 (at midnight, naked, according to the garlic guy at the farmer’s market), but we’ve been too busy and haven’t had enough daylight to plant. I did it asap after work today, and got a whole 15-ish ft. row planted. Let’s do math:
    10 bulbs x 6/7 cloves each + perfect growing conditions = 60/70 new bulbs of garlic per row. That means I planted enough garlic to last us a year (or more) within an hour. That seems bizarrely efficient to me, especially as a once-government-employee. I still have 30 or so bulbs left (= 210 more bulbs!!!!!!), and anything else I plant (assuming perfect growing conditions) is for sale or gifts, etc. The best part is that garlic requires NO WATERING. Honestly. That’s what the farmer guy said. I just plant the cloves (with about 6 inches of shit/manure underneath) and let them hibernate over winter. Etc. That’s my kind of plant!
  6. Oh, and we got our well water tested. It’s bad. The “colliform” count is supposed to be zero, and ours is 707. That concerned me, but “colliform” isn’t poop or anything (there’s no ecoli or fecal matter), it’s just dead plant matter. So I’m trying to think of it like soup. All our neighbours have perfect water, so it has to be the well or water lines that are contaminating everything. Brock’s dad suggested we let the water run for a day or more, to clear it out, so we’ll do that before anything complicated/expensive. (Doesn’t that seem weird, when we’re all so used to paying for our water usage? I’m water wealthy. I’m a water glutton.)

ANYhoo, I think those are all the crucial info bits. I keep leaving loose ends in my entries, which must make it sound like we’re living in a hovel with no working toilet. Let me assure you, our toilet is fine, it’s the water that’s killing us.

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Sunday, October 28, 2007 – Sunday Dinner After a Weekend on the Farm

Happiness = this life.

September 2007

Saturday, September 29, 2007 – Tired, Homeless Farm Owners in Duncan

If four months ago Brock had said, “Hey, let’s move to Duncan, buy land, and spend every night and weekend for four months trying to make it habitable!” I might not have so eagerly agreed. But luckily we were naive and assumed we could hire other people to do the work for us, with minimal cost, on time, and perfectly. Every step seems to have gone like this:
1.realize we need something else done (e.g. install conduits for the electrical hook-up before we pour the concrete foundation).
2. make up a tidy list of professionals, and call them for quotes.
3. 25% will be too busy to do the work, 25% will not be home and will never respond to my message, and 50% will agree to do an estimate or meet with us, but not for another 2 weeks.
4. we decide to do the work ourselves.
5. we figure out how to do it, by asking Dad or Randy, reading a book/brochure, researching online, watching Holmes on Homes, or cornering one of the older, wiser sales people at Home Hardware (Gary) or Rona (Richard).
6. we do the work. It’s messy, tiring, and it takes us a really long time.
7. we realize that the next step needs to be done asap. Repeat process.

While it’s been frustrating, exhausting, and has taken much longer than we expected, we are now infinitely more capable than we were in the spring. Brock can frame walls, frame and hang a ceiling, and will soon be able to install floors. I can tape & mud drywall (not well, but I can do it), shingle a roof, use a skilsaw and paint a wall properly. We own many, many tools. And they are not new and shiny anymore. By next weekend, we might perhaps maybe be moving in. I’ve already missed 100 expected move-in dates, so don’t count on it, but we are (FINALLY) in the home stretch.

As for the farm . . . I love growing edible things. Who knew? I hate bugs, I don’t like worms, poop is poopy and dirt is dirty, and yet . . . I love eating something that I PLANTED. It’s cool. And it’s mine. Real-estate-wise, I own the tree that grew that apple. Oh, yes, it turns out that the unnamed trees on our property are four apple trees, a pear tree, a plum tree, and a chestnut tree. The apples are different kinds – we’ve diagnosed two: Elstar and Granny Smiths. The pears are brown and really hard until they’ve sit for a few days on the counter. We have MILLIONS of pears. Thousands of apples. It’s ridiculous. Even the plums tasted good, and I don’t like plums.

My real-life experience in our garden and with our trees is being supplemented by subversive literature. I’m reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and if I didn’t already own an organic farm, I would want to own an organic farm. She’s inspired me to:

  • raise turkeys. Brock and I had a deep discussion about what we were okay with raising and killing on our property. Rules say that we can’t sell any meat we’ve reared unless we get a professional to kill it. But we can kill our own animals for our own consumption. So what do we enjoy eating enough to actually KILL for? Not chickens. I’ll stick with the frozen bulk bags of marinated chicken boobs from Costco. Pork? No. They have people eyes. The only two meat products I can’t live without / are worth killing for are turkeys and beef. So we will start with turkeys (they’re smaller). And I’ll do it Barbara Kingsolver’s way, with a heritage breed so they are maybe possibly still able to mate and have baby turkeys, and perpetuate my turkey flock.
  • make cheese. I’ve always wanted to make my own cheese. We eat so much of it, it would become our #1 expense if we have to buy it. I’ve followed Barbara’s advice and ordered a starter kit from the Cheese Queen (google it). Soft cheeses are easiest, but we eat mostly cheddar so I will master hard cheese making. Can you make Swiss cheese in the Cowichan Valley? We will soon find out.

Reading this book has reaffirmed my plans to bake our own bread (with a bread maker – I’m not ridiculous), grow our own garlic, and learn how to process/can/preserve/freeze veggies so we can eat them in the winter, and not waste our summer crops. I’m oddly excited about making pesto.

As for Farmer Brock, he is giddy with the thought of 10 acres to landscape. I can barely keep him in the house, to help me with the finishing work. We have a massive pile of quality topsoil in our front yard, waiting for his attention. He’s bought grass seed, determined to make the clay swamp in front of our house a walkable lawn. I bought him graph paper yesterday as a love present, so he can start his landscape plans. In his spare time. (HA!)

Along with our individual goals and visions are a few looming deadlines. We are totally broke, and need to get everything done as soon as possible so we can have the property re-appraised, get our mortgage increased, and pay our bills and our debts. This requires having the property completely livable, with septic, electricity, hydro, a finished house (including siding and trim), and as much landscaping done as possible to boost the value.

We need to have at least two acres tilled and ready to be planted by October 31 in order to claim farm status, and therefore qualify for reduced property taxes ($85 instead of thousands). This will require a tractor, either borrowed/rented/hired.

With the rainy winter season looming, we want to get our greenhouse standing so we’ll have somewhere to plant and pot our seeds and cuttings. Peter the Rabbit needs a safe, dry place to feel territorial about. And we have nowhere for guests to stay (except the pumphouse . . .), so we’d like to get my writing studio built before next summer.

While the list is lengthy, and each step requires many, many others, I’m excited about the whole thing. Our property is stop-and-stare beautiful sometimes. We keep discovering amazing surprises, like the full-grown tomato plants (with tomatoes!) that grow behind our front gate, and were hiding behind weeds until Brock cleared them. Or the mushrooms under our apple trees: I found five different kinds, one of which is probably highly tasty and expensive and will make us millionaires. (Don’t worry, we don’t intend to eat them until we’re sure they’re safe.)

When Hollis came to visit (he brought his mom, grandparents and Great-Gramma Demone), he picked an apple from one of the trees (with Dad’s help).

DAD: What’s that, Hollis?

HOLLIS: Apple.

DAD: Where’d you get it? Did you get it from a store?

HOLLIS: No. Tree.

That was pretty neat. My nephew knows that apples come from trees. He picked one and ate it. Meanwhile, the Safeway ad on the radio yesterday promoted their apples, “fresh from the produce section.” I’m not (yet) a militant farmer, but that shocked me. Apparently, apples don’t come from trees, or even farms – they come from Safeway.

This winter, I look forward to being dry & comfortable in my overly-well-insulated/built home. I will once again have my kettle and tea pot. Peter will have infinite fresh veggies to marinate his insides. Brock will spend his weekends becoming filthy, so I have to hose him off in the backyard. We will browse seed catalogues, I will research turkeys, and we will go on evening drives to find beautiful trees and steal cuttings. Also exciting: the third season of Lost will be out on DVD, so we will spend two weeks immersed, eating popcorn and growing our farm-fat. It sounds quite lovely, but be warned: if you visit us, you’ll have to sleep in the pumphouse.